It is common practice in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) to visually monitor and evaluate skin color of a neonate to have an indication of the neonate's physiopathologic conditions. For example, skin color provides indications of blood circulation, temperature and stress response of the neonate.
It is also common practice to shield the neonate, especially a premature neonate, from strong environmental light to avoid damage to eyes and to reduce the level of stress. The necessity of reducing exposure to light is recognized by the medical community and results in two main practices: having dimmed light within the NICU, and/or applying a cover to an incubator to provide shielding from light in the NICU environment.
However, the dimmed light will highly degrade the accuracy of skin color monitoring. Furthermore, while shielding the neonate from environmental light, the cover of the incubator also hinders visual monitoring of the neonate, and therefore, the cover needs to be periodically opened or removed to evaluate skin color.
While the monitoring of movements in the dark could be easily accomplished by simply using available infra-red cameras, there is currently no solution for monitoring skin color in the absence of light or at an extremely reduced light intensity.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,679,830 B2 discloses an infant care unit and suggests using video cameras to monitor physiological parameters such as skin color. However, it does not disclose how to monitor skin color of a neonate when the neonate is within the infant care unit which is generally kept very dark to protect the neonate.